Thursday, September 27, 2007

Expanding Earth Theory

I just encountered a new (to me) theory of existence: The Earth is Expanding. Proponents make an amazing claim that "The evidence is obvious, unmistakable and irrefutable!" [1]. What the frijoles is it?

As I understand it, proponents of this theory (EET) assert that the world was once much smaller but expanded, and continues to expand, due to two phenomena: (1) external accretion by the addition of comets, meteorites, and other space dust to the mass of the Earth, and (2) internal core expansion by gravitationally induced heating [2]. Various proofs for this position include:

The fallacy of the nebular hypothesis is shown very clearly in the physiographic cross-section of the Grand Canyon cliffs in Northern Arizona and the photo shown below (not pictured in this blog). These layers were laid down (accreted) as solid matter, and none show signs of having been melted at any time. These layers are positive evidence the Earth has grown steadily over time.

The bottom layers of the Grand Canyon, ~1.6 kilometers (one mile) down, go back in time almost a billion years to the Precambrian, leaving another ~6365 kilometers to Earth's center. This suggests the Earth could be much older than the 4.5 billion years now accepted as its age from radio-carbon dating of meteorites. [3]

EET also argues that continental drift, as understood today, did not occur by tectonic plates shifting and movement but rather by the Earth expanding and moving the continents apart. Subduction (the notion that oceanic plates move into and under continental masses) is fallacious and religated to the position of sophistry:

But the possibility of an expanding Earth raised a philosophical dilemma because cosmologists, geophysicists and marine geologists had always been taught the Earth has always been the same size since it was first created ~4.5-4.6 Ga (billion years ago). Surely, the Earth could not be expanding as Professor S. Warren Carey (1956, 1976) had argued!

So, when subduction was conceived (invented) in 1967 it was immediately perceived to be the solution to their dilemma, and the "Plate Tectonics Revolution" began, with subduction as its mechanism, powered by convection cells with hot magma rising to the surface in the midocean ridges (MOR) and older seafloor along continental margins being subducted (descending) back into the mantle to be re-melted and recycled back to the surface as new magma.

Now, thirty-five years later, subduction is accepted dogma throughout the world--to the detriment, unfortunately, for scientific progress because now subduction has been shown to be totally false! [4]